On coming into the Piazza del Duomo, perhaps from the light and space of
the Lung' Arno or from the largeness of the Piazza della Signoria, one
is apt to think of it as too small for the buildings which it holds, as
wanting in a certain spaciousness such as the Piazza of St. Peter at
Rome certainly possesses, or in the light of the meadow of Pisa; and yet
this very smallness, only smallness when we consider the great buildings
set there so precisely, gives it an element of beauty lacking in the
great Piazza of Rome and in Pisa too--a certain delicate colour and
shadow and a sense of nearness, of homeliness almost; for the shadow of
the dome falls right across the city itself every morning and evening.
And indeed the Piazza del Duomo of Florence is still the centre of the
life of the city, and though to some this may be matter for regret, I
have found in just that a sort of consolation for the cabs which Ruskin
hated so, for the trams which he never saw; for just these two necessary
unfortunate things bring one so often there that of all the cathedrals
of Italy that of Florence must be best known to the greatest number of
people at all hours of the day. And this fact, evil and good working
together for life's sake, makes the Duomo a real power in the city, so
that everyone is interested, often passionately interested, in it: it
has a real influence on the lives of the citizens, so that nothing in
the past or even to-day has ever been attempted with regard to it
without winning the people's leave. Yet it is not the Duomo alone that
thus lives in the hearts of the Florentines, but the whole Piazza. There
they have established their trophies, and set up their gifts, and
lavished their treasure. It was built for all, and it belongs to all; it
is the centre of the city.
This enduring vitality of a place so old, so splendid, and so beloved,
is, I think, particularly manifest in the Church of S. Giovanni
Battista, the Baptistery. It is the oldest building in Florence, built
probably with the stones from the Temple of Mars about which Villani
tells us, and almost certainly in its place; every Florentine child,
fortunate at least in this, is still brought there for baptism, and
receives its name in the place where Dante was christened, where
Ippolito Buondelmonti first saw Dianora de' Bardi, where Donatello has
laboured, which Michelangelo has loved.
Built probably in the sixth or seventh century, it was Arnolfo di Cambio
who covered it with marble in 1288, building also three new doorways
where before there had been but one, that on the west side, which was
then closed. The mere form, those octagonal walls which, so it is said,
the Lombards brought into Italy, go to show that the church was used as
a Baptistery from the first, though Villani speaks of it as the Duomo;
and indeed till 1550 it had the aspect of such a church as the Pantheon
in Rome, in that it was open to the sky, so that the rain and the
sunlight have fallen on the very floor trodden by so many generations.
Humble and simple enough as we see it to-day before the gay splendour of
the new façade of the Duomo, it has yet those great treasures which the
Duomo cannot boast, the bronze doors of Andrea Pisano and of Ghiberti.
[Illustration: PIAZZA DEL DUOMO]
Over the south doorway there was placed in the end of the sixteenth
century a group by Vincenzo Danti, said to be his best work, the
Beheading of St. John Baptist; and under are the gates of Andrea Pisano
carved in twenty bronze panels with the story of St. John and certain
virtues: and around the gate Ghiberti has twined an exquisite pattern of
leaves and fruits and birds, it is strange to find Ghiberti's work
thus completing that of Andrea Pisano, who, as it is said, had Giotto to
help him, till we understand that originally these southern gates stood
where now are the "Gates of Paradise" before the Duomo. Standing there
as they used to do before Ghiberti moved them, they won for Andrea not
only the admiration of the people, but the freedom of the city. To-day
we come to them with the praise of Ghiberti ringing in our ears, so that
in our hurry to see everything we almost pass them by; but in their
simpler, and, as some may think, more sincere way, they are as lovely as
anything Ghiberti ever did, and in comparing them with the great gates
that supplanted them, it may be well to remind ourselves that each has
its merit in its own fashion. If the doors of Andrea won the praise of
the whole city, it was with an ever-growing excitement that Florence
proclaimed a public competition, open to all the sculptors of Italy, for
the work that remained, those two doors on the north and east. Ghiberti,
at that time in Rimini at the court of Carlo Malatesta, at the entreaty
of his father returned to Florence, and was one of the two artists out
of the thirty-four who competed, to be chosen for the task: the other
was Filippo Brunellesco. You may see the two panels they made in the
Bargello side by side on the wall. The subject is the Sacrifice of
Isaac, and Ghiberti, with the real instinct of the sculptor, has
altogether outstripped Brunellesco, not only in the harmony of his
composition, but in the simplicity of his intention. Brunellesco seems
to have understood this, and, perhaps liking the lad who was but
twenty-two years old, withdrew from the contest. However this may be,
Ghiberti began the work at once, and finished the door on the north side
of the Baptistery in ten years. There, amid a framework of exquisite
foliage, leaves, birds, and all kinds of life, he has set the gospel
story in twenty panels, beginning with the Annunciation and ending with
the Pentecost; and around the gate he has set the four Evangelists and
the doctors of the Church and the prophets. Above you may see the group
of a pupil of Verrocchio, the Preaching of St. John.
In looking on these beautiful and serene works, we may already notice
an advance on the work of Andrea Pisano in a certain ease and harmony, a
richness and variety, that were beyond the older master. Ghiberti has
already begun to change with his genius the form that has come down to
him, to expand it, to break down its limitations so that he may express
himself, may show us the very visions he has seen. And the success of
these gates with the people certainly confirmed him in the way he was
going. In the third door, that facing the Duomo, which Michelangelo has
said was worthy to be the gate of Paradise, it is really a new art we
come upon, the subtle rhythms and perspectives of a sort of pictorial
sculpture, that allows him to carve here in such low relief that it is
scarcely more than painting, there in the old manner, the old manner but
changed, full of a sort of exuberance which here at any rate is beauty.
The ten panels which Ghiberti thus made in his own way are subjects from
the Old Testament: the Creation of Adam and Eve, the story of Cain and
Abel, of Noah, of Abraham and Isaac, of Jacob and Esau, of Joseph, of
Moses on Sinai, of Joshua before Jericho, of David and Goliath, of
Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. At his death in 1455 they were
unfinished, and a host of sculptors, including Brunellesco and Paolo
Uccello, are said to have handled the work, Antonio del Pollajuolo being
credited with the quail in the lower frame. Over the door stands the
beautiful work of Sansovino, the Baptism of Christ.
It is with a certain sense of curiosity that one steps down into the old
church; for in spite of every sort of witness it has the air of some
ancient temple: nor do the beautiful antique columns which support the
triforium undeceive us. For long enough now the mosaics of the vault
have been hidden by the scaffolding of the restorers; but the beautiful
thirteenth-century floor of white and black marble, in the midst of
which the font once stood, is still undamaged. The font, which is
possibly a work of the Pisani, is on one side, set there, as it is said,
because of old the roof of the church was open, and many a winter
christening spoiled by rain.[86] It was not, however, till 1571 that
the old font, surrounded by its small basins, one of which Dante broke
in saving a man from drowning there, was removed from the church by
Francesco I, Grand Duke of Tuscany, for the christening of his son.
Certain vestiges of the oldest church remain: you may see a sarcophagus,
one of those which, before Arnolfo covered the church with marble, stood
without and held the ashes of some of the greater families. But the most
beautiful thing here is the tomb that Donatello made for Baldassare
Cossa, pirate, condottiere, and anti-pope, who, deposed by the Council
of Constance (1414), came to Florence, and, as ever, was kindly received
by the people. It stands beside the north door. On a marble couch
supported by lions, the gilt bronze statue of this prince of
adventurers, who grasped the very chair of St. Peter as booty, lies, his
brow still troubled, his mouth set firm as though plotting new conquests
even in the grave. Below, on the tomb itself, two winged _angiolini_
hold the great scroll on which we read the name of the dead man,
Johannes Quondam Papa XXIII: to which inscription Martin V, Cossa's
successful rival at Constance, is said to have taken exception; but the
Medici who had built the tomb answered in Pilate's words to the
Pharisees, "What I have written, I have written." The three marble
figures in niches at the base may be by Michelozzo, who worked with
Donatello, or possibly by Pagano di Lapo, as the Madonna above the tomb
almost certainly is.
Coming up once more into the Piazza from that mysterious dim church, dim
with the centuries of the history of the city, you come upon two
porphyry columns beside the eastern door. They are the gift of Pisa[87]
when her ships returned from the Balearic Islands to Florence, who had
defended their city from the Lucchesi. The column with the branch of
olive in bronze upon it to the north of the Baptistery reminds us of the
miracle performed by the body of S. Zenobio in 490. Borne to burial in
S. Reparata, the bier is said to have touched a dead olive tree standing
on this spot, which immediately put forth leaves: the column
commemorates this miracle. So in Florence they remind us of the gods.
In turning now to the Duomo we come to one of the great buildings of the
world. Standing on the site of the old church of S. Salvatore, of S.
Reparata, it is a building of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,
begun in 1298 from the designs of Arnolfo; and it is dedicated to S.
Maria del Fiore. Coming to us without the wonderful romantic interest,
the mysticism and exaltation of such a church as Notre Dame d'Amiens,
without the more resolute and heroic appeal of such a stronghold as the
Cathedral of Durham, it is more human than either, the work of a man
who, as it were, would thank God that he was alive and glad in the
world. And it will never bring us delight if we ask of it all the
consummate mystery, awe, and magic of the great Gothic churches of the
North. The Tuscans certainly have never understood the Christian
religion as we have contrived to do in Northern Europe. It came to them
really as a sort of divine explanation of a paganism which entranced but
bewildered them. Behind it lay the Roman Empire; and its temples became
their churches, its halls of justice their cathedrals, its tongue the
only language understood of the gods. It is unthinkable that a people
who were already in the twelfth century the possessors of a marvellous
decadent art in the painting of the Byzantine school, who, finding again
the statues of the gods, created in the thirteenth century a new art of
painting, a Christian art that was the child of imperial Rome as well as
of the Christian Church, who re-established sculpture and produced the
only sculptor of the first rank in the modern world, should have failed
altogether in architecture. Yet everywhere we may hear it said that the
Italian churches, spoken of with scorn by those who remember the
strange, subtle exaltation of Amiens, the extraordinary intricate
splendour of such a church as the Cathedral of Toledo, are mere barns.
But it is not so. As Italian painting is a profound and natural
development from Greek and Roman art, certainly influenced by life, but
in no doubt of its parentage; so are the Italian churches a very
beautiful and subtle development of pagan architecture, influenced by
life not less profoundly than painting has been, but certainly as sure
of their parentage, and, as we shall see, not less assured of their
intention. Just as painting, as soon as may be, becomes human, becomes
pagan in Signorelli and Botticelli, and yet contrives to remain true to
its new gods, so architecture as soon as it is sure of itself moves with
joy, with endless delight and thanksgiving, towards that goal of the old
builders: in such a church as S. Maria della Consolazione outside Todi,
for instance,--in such a church as S. Pietro might have been,--and that
it is not so, we may remind ourselves, is the fault of that return to
barbarism and superstition which Luther led in the North.
What then, we may ask ourselves, were the aim and desire of the Italian
builders, which it seems have escaped us for so long? If we turn to the
builders of antiquity and seek for their intention in what remains to us
of their work, we shall find, I think, that their first aim was before
all things to make the best building they could for a particular
purpose, and to build that once for all. And out of these two intentions
the third must follow; for if a temple, for instance, were both fit and
strong it would be beautiful because the purpose for which it was needed
was noble and beautiful. Now the first necessity of the basilica, for
instance, was space; and the intention of the builder would be to build
so that that space should appear as splendid as possible, and to do this
and to enjoy it would necessitate, above all things, light,--a problem
not so difficult after all in a land like Italy, where the sun is so
faithful and so divine. Taking the necessity, then, of the Italian to be
much the same as that of the Roman builder when he was designing a
basilica,--that is to say, the accommodation of a crowd of people who
are to take part in a common solemnity,--we shall find that the
intention of the Italian in building his churches is exactly that of the
Roman in building his basilica: he desires above all things space and
light, partly because they seem to him necessary for the purpose of the
church, and partly because he thinks them the two most splendid and
majestic things in the world.
Well, he has altogether carried out his intention in half a hundred
churches up and down Italy: consider here in Florence S. Croce, S. Maria
Novella, S. Spirito, and above all the Duomo. Remember his aim was not
the aim of the Gothic builder. He did not wish to impress you with the
awfulness of God, like the builder of Barcelona; or with the mystery of
the Crucifixion, like the builders of Chartres: he wished to provide for
you in his practical Latin way a temple where you might pray, where the
whole city might hear Mass or applaud a preacher. He did this in his own
noble and splendid fashion as well as it could be done. He has never
believed, save when driven mad by the barbarians, in the mysterious
awfulness of our far-away God. He prays as a man should pray, without
self-consciousness and not without self-respect. He is without
sentiment; he believes in largeness, grandeur, splendour, and sincerity;
and he has known the gods for three thousand years.
What, then, we are to look for in entering such a church as S. Maria del
Fiore is, above all, a noble spaciousness and the beauty of just
that.[88]
The splendour and nobility of S. Maria del Fiore from without are
evident, it might seem, to even the most prejudiced observer; but
within, I think, the beauty is perhaps less easily perceived.
One comes through the west doors out of the sunshine of the Piazza into
an immense nave, and the light is that of an olive garden,--yes, just
that sparkling, golden, dancing shadow of a day of spring in an old
olive grove not far from the sea. In this delicate and fragile light the
beauty and spaciousness of the church are softened and simplified. You
do not reason any longer, you accept it at once as a thing complete and
perfect. Complete and perfect--yet surely spoiled a little by the
gallery that dwarfs the arches and seems to introduce a useless detail
into what till then must have been so simple. One soon forgets so small
a thing in the immensity and solemnity of the whole, that seems to come
to one with the assurance of the sky or of the hills, really without an
afterthought. And indeed I find there much of the strange simplicity of
natural things that move us we know not why: the autumn fields of which
Alberti speaks, the far hills at evening, the valleys that in an hour
will make us both glad and sorry, as the sun shines or the clouds gather
or the wind sings on the hills. Not a church to think in as St. Peter's
is, but a place where one may pray, said Pius IX when he first saw S.
Maria del Fiore: and certainly it has that in common with the earth,
that you may be glad in it as well as sorry. It is not a museum of the
arts; it is not a pantheon like Westminster Abbey or S. Croce; it is the
beautiful house where God and man may meet and walk in the shadow.
Yet little though there be to interest the curious, Giovanni Acuto, that
Englishman Sir John Hawkwood of the White Company, one of the first of
the Condottieri, the deliverer of Pisa, "the first real general of
modern times," is buried here. You may see his equestrian portrait by
Paolo Uccello over the north-west doorway in his habit as he lived.
Having fought against the Republic and died in its service, he was
buried here with public honours in 1394. And then in the north aisle you
may see the statue called a portrait of Poggio Bracciolini[89] by
Donatello. Donatello carved a number of statues, of which nine have been
identified, for the Opera del Duomo, three of these are now in the
Cathedral: the Poggio, the so-called Joshua in the south aisle, which
has been said to be a portrait of Gianozzo Manetti; and the St. John
the Evangelist in the eastern part of the nave. The Poggio certainly
belongs to the series: it would be delightful if the cryptic writing on
the borders of the garment were to prove it to be the Job. The St. John
Evangelist is an earlier work than the Poggio; it was begun when
Donatello was twenty-two years old, and, as Lord Balcarres says, "it
challenges comparison with one worthy rival, the Moses of Michelangelo."
It was to have stood on one side of the central door. Something of the
wonder of this work in its own time may be understood if we compare it,
not with the later work of Michelangelo, but with the statues of St.
Mark by Niccolò d'Arezzo, the St. Luke of Nanni di Banco, and the St.
Matthew of Bernardo Ciuffagni, which were to stand beside it and are now
placed in a good light in the nave, while the work of Donatello is
almost invisible in this dark apsidal chapel. Of the other works which
Donatello made for the Opera del Duomo, the David is in the Bargello,
while the Jeremiah, and Habbakuk, the so-called Zuccone, the Abraham,
and St. John Baptist are still on the Campanile.
The octagonal choir screens carved in relief by Baccio Bandinelli, whom
Cellini hated so scornfully because he spoke lightly of Michelangelo,
will not keep you long; but there behind the high altar is an unfinished
Pietà by Michelangelo himself. It is a late work, but in that fallen
Divine Figure just caught in Madonna's arms you may see perhaps the most
beautiful thing in the church, less splendid but more pitiful than the
St. John of Donatello, but certainly not less moving than that severe,
indomitable son of thunder. Above, the dome soars into heaven; that
mighty dome, higher than St. Peter's, the despair of Michelangelo, one
of the beauties of the world. One wanders about the church looking at
the bronze doors of the Sagrestia Nuova, or the terra-cottas of Luca
della Robbia, always to return to that miracle of Brunellesco's. Not far
away in the south aisle you come upon his monument with his portrait in
marble by Buggiano. The indomitable persistence of the face! Is it any
wonder that, impossible as his dream appeared, he had his way with
Florence at last--yes, and with himself too? As you stand at the corner
of Via del Proconsolo, and, looking upward, see that immense dome
soaring into the sky over that church of marble, something of the joy
and confidence and beauty that were immortal in him come to you too from
his work. Like Columbus, he conquered a New World. His schemes, which
the best architects in Europe laughed at, were treated with scorn by the
Consiglio, yet he persuaded them at last. In 1418 he made his designs,
and the people, as now, were called upon to vote. Two years went by, and
nothing was done; then in 1420 he was elected by the Opera to the post
of Provveditore della Cupola, but not alone, for Lorenzo Ghiberti and
Battista d'Antonio were elected with him. Still he persisted, and, as
the Florentines say, by pretending sickness and leaving the work to
Ghiberti, who knew nothing about it and could do nothing without him, in
1421 he won over the Consiglio. He began at once. What his agonies may
have been, what profound difficulties he discovered and conquered, we do
not know, but by 1434, when Eugenius IV was in Florence and the Duomo
was consecrated, his dome was finished, wanting only the lantern and the
ball. These he began in 1437, but died too soon to see, for the lantern
was not finished till 1458, and it was only in 1471 that Verrocchio cast
the bronze ball.[90]
Wandering round to the façade, finished in 1886, it is a careful
imitation of fifteenth-century work we see, saved from the mere routine
of just that, in its design at any rate, by the vote of the people, who,
against the opinion of all the artists in Florence at that time,
insisted on the cornice following the basilical form of the tower,
refusing to endorse the pointed "tricuspidal" design. It is not,
however, in such merely competent work as this that we shall find
ourselves interested, but rather in the beautiful door on the north
just before the transept, over which, in an almond-shaped glory, Madonna
gives her girdle to St. Thomas. Given now to Nanni di Banco, a sculptor
of the end of the fourteenth century, whom Vasari tells us was the pupil
of Donatello, it long passed as the work of Jacopo della Quercia.
Certainly one of the loveliest works of the early Renaissance, it is so
full of life and gracious movement, so natural and so noble, that
everything else in the Cathedral, save the work of Donatello, is
forgotten beside it. Madonna enthroned among the Cherubim in her oval
mandorla, upheld by four puissant fair angels, turns with a gesture most
natural and lovely to St. Thomas, who kneels to her, his drapery in
beautiful folds about him, lifting his hands in prayer. Above, three
angels play on pipes and reeds; while in a corner a great bear gnaws at
the bark of an oak in full leaf.
In turning now to the Campanile, which Giotto began in 1334, on the site
of a chapel of S. Zenobio, we come to the last building of the great
group. Fair and slim as a lily, as light as that, as airy and full of
grace, to my mind at least it lacks a certain stability, so that looking
on it I always fear in my heart lest it should fall. It seems to lack
roots, as it were, yet by no means to want confidence or force. Can it
be that, after all, it would have seemed more secure, more firm and
established, if the spire Giotto designed for it had in truth been
built? The consummate and supreme artist, architect, sculptor, and
painter was not content to design so fair, so undreamed-of a flower as
this, but set himself to make the statues and the reliefs that were
necessary also. And then has he not built as only a painter could have
done, in white and rose and green? He died too soon to see the fairest
of his dreams, and it is really to two other artists--Taddeo Gaddi and
Francesco Talenti--that the actual work, after the first five
storeys--those windows, for instance, that add so much to the beauty of
the tower--is owing.[91]
[Illustration: THE MADONNA DELLA CINTOLA
_By Nanni di Banco. Duomo, Florence_
_Alinari_]
The reliefs that, set some five-and-twenty feet from the ground, are
so difficult to see, are the work of Andrea Pisano, the sculptor of the
south gate of the Baptistery. Born at Pontedera, the pupil of Giovanni
Pisano, this great and lovable artist has been robbed of much that
belongs to him. Vasari tells us--and for long we believed him--that
Giotto helped him to design the gate of the Baptistery; and again, that
Giotto designed these reliefs for Andrea to carve and found. It might
seem impossible to believe that the greatest sculptor then living, fresh
from a great triumph, would have consented to use the design of a
painter, even though he were Giotto. However this may be, the reliefs
really speak for themselves: those on the south side--early Sabianism,
house-building, pottery, training horses, weaving, lawgiving, and
exploration--are certainly by Andrea; while among the rest the Jubal,
the Creation of Man, the Creation of Woman, seem to be his own among the
work of his pupils. It is to quite another hand, however, to Luca della
Robbia, that the Grammar, Poetry, Philosophy, Astrology, and Music must
be given. The genius of Andrea Pisano, at its best in those Baptistery
gates, in the panel of the Baptism of our Lord, for instance, or in
those marvellous works on the façade of the Duomo at Orvieto, so full of
force, vitality, and charm, is, as I think, less fortunate in its
expression when he is concerned with such work as these statues of the
prophets in the niches on the south wall of the Campanile,--if indeed
they be his. Seen as these figures are, beside the large, splendid,
realistic work of Donatello, so wonderfully ugly in the Zuccone, so
pitiless in the Habakkuk, they are quickly forgotten; but indeed
Donatello's work seems to stand alone in the history of sculpture till
the advent of Michelangelo.
I speak of Donatello elsewhere in this book,[92] but you will find one
of his best works among much curious, interesting litter from the Duomo
in the Opera del Duomo, the Cathedral Museum in the old Falconieri
Palace just behind the apse of the Cathedral. A bust of Cosimo Primo
stands over the entrance, and within you find a beautiful head of
Brunellesco by Buggiano. It is, however, in a room on the first floor
that you will find the great organ lofts, one by Donatello and the other
by Luca della Robbia, which I suppose are among the best known works of
art in the world. Made for the Cathedral, these galleries for singers
seem to be imprisoned in a museum.
The beautiful youths of Luca, the children of Donatello, for all their
seeming vigour and joy, sing and dance no more; they are in as evil a
case as the Madonnas of the Uffizi, who, in their golden frames behind
the glass, under the vulgar, indifferent eyes of the multitude, envy
Madonna of the street-corner the love of the lowly. So it is with the
beautiful Cantorie made for God's praise by Donatello and Luca della
Robbia. Before the weary eyes of the sight-seer, the cold eyes of the
scientific critic, in the horrid silence of a museum, amid so much that
is dead, here the headless trunk of some saint, there the battered
fragments of what was once a statue, some shadow has fallen upon them,
and though they keep still the gesture of joy, they are really dead or
sleeping. Is it only sleep? Do they perhaps at night, when all the doors
of their prisons are barred and their gaolers are gone, praise God in
His Holiness, even in such a hell as this? Who knows? They were made for
a world so different, for a time that out of the love of God had seen
arise the very beauty of the world, and were glad therefor. Ah, of how
many beautiful things have we robbed God in our beggary! We have
imprisoned the praise of the artists in the museums that Science may
pass by and sneer; we have arranged the saints in order, and Madonna we
have carefully hidden under the glass, because now we never dream of God
or speak with Him at all. Art is dying, Beauty is become a burden,
Nature a thing for science and not for love. They are become too
precious, the old immortal things; we must hide them away lest they fade
and God take them from us: and because we have hidden them away, and
they are become too precious for life, and we have killed them because
we loved them, we seldom pass by where they are save to satisfy the
same curiosity that leads us to any other charnel-house where the dead
are exposed.
[Illustration: SINGING BOYS FROM THE CANTORIA OF LUCA DELLA ROBBIA
_In Opera del Duomo, Florence_
_Alinari_]
Thus they have stolen away the silver altar of the Baptistery, that
miracle of the fourteenth-century silversmiths, Betto di Geri, Leonardo
di Ser Giovanni, and the rest, that it may be a cause of wonder in a
museum. So a flower looks between the cold pages of a botanist's album,
so a bird sings in his case: for life is to do that for which we were
created, and if that be the praise of God in His sanctuary, to stand
impotently by under the gaze of innumerable unbelievers in a museum is
to die. And truly this is a shame in Italy that so many fair and lovely
things have been torn out of their places to be catalogued in a gallery.
It were a thousand times better that they were allowed to fade quietly
on the walls of the church where they were born. It is a vandalism only
possible to the modern world in which the machines have ground out every
human feeling and left us nothing but a bestial superstition which we
call science, and which threatens to become the worst tyranny of all,
that we should thus herd together, catalogue, describe, arrange, and
gape at every work of art and nature we can lay our hands on. No doubt
it brings in, directly and indirectly, an immense revenue to the country
which can show the most of such death chambers. Often by chance or
mistake one has wandered into a museum--though I confess I never
understood in what relation it stood to the Muses--where your scientist
has collected his scraps and refuse of Nature, things that were
wonderful or beautiful once--birds, butterflies, the marvellous life of
the foetus, and such--but that in his hands have died in order that he
may set them out and number them one by one. Here you will find a leg
that once stood firm enough, there an arm that once for sure held
someone in its embrace: now it is exposed to the horror and curiosity of
mankind. Well, it is the same with the Pictures and the statues. Why,
men have prayed before them, they have heard voices, tears have fallen
where they stood, and they have whispered to us of the beauty and the
love of God. To-day, herded in thousands, chained to the walls of their
huge dungeons, they are just specimens like the dead butterflies which
we pay to see, which some scientific critic without any care for beauty
will measure and describe in the inarticulate and bestial syllables of
some degenerate dialect he thinks is language. Our unfortunate gods! How
much more fortunate were they of the older world: Zeus, whose statue of
ivory and gold mysteriously was stolen away; Aphrodite of Cnidus, which
someone hid for love; and you, O Victory of Samothrace, that being
headless you cannot see the curious, peeping, indifferent multitude. Was
it for this the Greeks blinded their statues, lest the gods being in
exile, they might be shamed by the indifference of men? And now that our
gods too are exiled, who will destroy their images and their pictures
crowded in the museums, that the foolish may not speak of them we have
loved, nor the scientist say, such and such they were, in stature of
such a splendour, carved by such a man, the friend of the friend of a
fool? But our gods are dead.